Fellows
Fellows in Residence
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Dance
Matty Davis
Choreographer — United States
Matty Davis is an artist engaged in embodied explorations of the tension between fragility and fortitude. His work uses choreography as an instrument to activate high-stakes relationships concerning some of the most important aspects of our lives: trust, risk, responsibility… His performances have been described as “balancing ecstatically on the edge of life and death” (Jesse Zaritt). Matty's work has been presented by High Line Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Palais de Tokyo, among many others. He currently teaches at Columbia University.
While at Bogliasco, Matty Davis will be working on a new project that involves a “performance arranged for print”—a new form that he has been trailblazing since 2021—as well as a related live work. These interconnected works involve and hinge on mathematical form that blurs inner and outer surfaces: the Möbius strip. Ultimately, Matty aims to explore the pursuit of human ideals and what can happen both inside and outside us as bodies in the face and pursuit of our highest aims.
Film/Video
Sierra Pettengill
Filmmaker — United States
Sierra Pettengill is a filmmaker from Brooklyn whose heavily archival-focused work focuses on the warped narratives of American history. Her films have screened at MoMA, Lincoln Center, the Sundance and Locarno Film Festivals, on the Criterion Channel, and in festivals and venues around the world. She is a Guggenheim Fellow, a Sundance Art of Nonfiction Fellow, and is a board member of the cinema nonprofit, Screen Slate. Her most recent film was RIOTSVILLE, USA, released by Magnolia Pictures.
Sierra Pettengill will be researching and developing a hybrid film project structured around Emile Zola's Les Rougon-Macquart novels.
History
Sebastián Carassai
Author and Professor of History — Argentina/Italy
Sebastián Carassai is a historian, a professor at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, a member of the Center for Intellectual History at the Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, and a researcher at CONICET. He is the author of the books The Argentine Silent Majority: Middle Classes, Politics, Violence, and Memory in the Seventies (Duke University Press); Lo que no sabemos de Malvinas: Las islas, su gente y nosotros antes de la guerra (Siglo XXI); and, together with Kevin Coleman, Coups d’État in Cold War Latin America, 1964–1982 (Cambridge University Press).
Sebastián's project explores the intellectual history of the concept of populism in Latin America, tracing how its meanings have evolved from the 1940s to the present. It examines how the idea of populism has been redefined in relation to authoritarianism, democracy, development, and social change. Understanding the history of the relationship between populism and Latin America offers a unique perspective for addressing contemporary global challenges, both within and beyond South America
